


Season 5, Retconned

by snp



Category: The 100 (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-23 17:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14938893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snp/pseuds/snp
Summary: Between several flashbacks and short vignettes set in the present time, we see how Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake find each other again after a six-year separation...***Clarke Griffin didn’t know much for sure these days. She knew she was so, so lucky to have found Madi, and to have built their home together in Shallow Valley. She knew she had stumbled into a tiny slice of Eden, at the exact moment she needed to, and that she had been forced to sacrifice a hell of a lot to get to where she was now. And she knew that if she ever saw him again, she would find the courage in herself to tell Bellamy Blake that she did, in fact, love him. That she probably always had, and she would until her last breath.For now, though, Bellamy wasn’t back just yet. He was running behind schedule, and Clarke was taking every opportunity to scold him over the radio. Just like old times. She was mostly joking, but some mornings when she’d begin her daily call, Clarke would feel the impatience growing like an unwieldy vine inside her, grabbing hold of her throat and squeezing stray tears from her eyes.It’s been safe for you to come down for over a year now… Why haven’t you?Still, Clarke had hope.





	1. 5x01

_“I was just gonna say… hurry."_

_“You too.”_

  
Clarke Griffin tore from herself from her dream the same way she had for over 2,000 days now. With Bellamy Blake’s voice in her head, making a promise to see her again. Clarke hoped with everything in her that he’d kept his word -- that he’d hurried -- that Bellamy and the others had all made it to the Ring.

Granted: Clarke had kind of screwed up her end of the deal, but she’d done everything she could, and it had worked out okay in the end.

Turning over, Clarke let her eyes rest on Madi’s sleeping face. The little nightblood she’d found years ago, wild-haired and dangerous, was now the image of peace, and Clarke was content to watch her a while. Six years ago, Clarke never imagined that something could be more precious to her than the lives of her friends, or her mother, but becoming something of a mother herself had changed all that. She understood Abby now with an aching clarity; sometimes it came to her so sharply that she felt the stab of it in the very core of her heart.

When Madi began to stir a second later, Clarke climbed gently over her, off their shared mattress, and padded over to the narrow wall on the other side of the room. It was covered by a low hanging set of sheets, and when Clarke drew back the faux-curtains, she withdrew the knife holstered at her thigh and carved a new tally mark into the concrete.

2,191 days.

***************

Madi was chasing butterflies again. Their wings were oranges and yellows, or bright pinks with black spots, none neon blue or glowing, but the image still reminded Clarke of Octavia Blake. Or, at least, it reminded her of Octavia in the first few weeks she’d known her. The girl from under the floor. A secret child -- wrong for having just been born. The person Bellamy would do anything for. His sister.

Clarke sighed. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. Especially when she was reflecting on the past. Those days felt so far away now, and Clarke felt old. Her nostalgia turned quickly to an odd humor when she realized that she was 24 by now, a year older than Bellamy was when they’d landed on the ground.

“So if I’m old at 24, then what does that make you?” she asked Bellamy over the radio, almost giggling. “Ancient, Bellamy, that’s what. God, you’ve gotta be going gray by now.”

Clarke addressed almost all her transmissions to Bellamy. On random days, she would say things directly to Murphy (“I’m eating some sort of pheasant today, and I have to admit, Murphy, I do miss your cooking”) or Raven (“Hey, if you’re doubting yourself, Raven -- don’t. You’ve got this.”) and even more rarely she would speak little nothings to Monty and Harper (“I miss you guys. I hope you’re doing okay with the algae diet.”) but she wasn’t quite sure if they’d want to hear from her with all the heavy things left hanging over them still. What she did know was that she had no idea what to say to them, even after all this time. Jasper’s ghost was threaded through everything now, coloring all of her interactions with the remaining delinquents. His loss hovered over Clarke at the strangest of moments.

“My savior,” he’d called her once. And she’d thanked him for not dying on her. Maybe she was his savior, for that brief moment in time, but for most of the time she’d known Jasper, she’d been the reason for his torment, having stolen the last remaining breaths from the lungs of the girl he’d loved. _Maya. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

Sorry had never been enough though, and Clarke had understood that. In the weeks following Praimfaya, when Clarke had recovered Jasper’s goggles, the pain was as keen as when she’d first learned of his death. Clarke couldn’t help but wonder if it might’ve been better to let Jasper go, once the spear had split his chest. Even with that wound, Jasper would have suffered so much less. He would have died the kind, light-hearted boy he was before Earth had chewed him up and spit him back out.

But even with that hindsight, Clarke knew in her heart that she would’ve made all the same choices, walked all the same paths. Because the truth was that something lived inside her that did not, and would not, let go or give up. Ever.

The fight was all Clarke Griffin had ever known.

***************

Clarke blinked out of her reverie, remembering that she’d stopped mid-sentence in her current call to Bellamy. Yes, just to Bellamy. The person she talked to more than anyone -- even more than Madi. Mostly because she needed to -- to keep some integral part of herself alive, and to keep him alive, even just in her memory -- but also because if the group in space could, by some slim chance, hear her speaking to them… well, Clarke wanted Bellamy to remember he was special. Special to her.

The realization had hit her with sudden force, during the fraught countdown to Praimfaya. And it had been eating away at her every waking moment since.

_You care about him._

_Start with Bellamy Blake._

Even her own words haunted her: _Together._  
  
_I need you._  
  
_I trust you._  
  
_I can’t lose you too._

The truth was right there, in plain sight, and Clarke spent entire days being mad at herself, feeling ridiculous, because when she finally had some time to look it in the face, she realized that she was the last to know.

_You have such a big heart, Bellamy._

Bellamy would’ve known, surely. He led with his heart, and Clarke took some solace in the notion that even though she hadn’t said the words, he still knew -- because of the unbreakable tether between them, the one that allowed all of their wordless communications, the one that pulled tight around Clarke’s heart whenever they were separated, the one that kept Clarke feeling connected to Bellamy, even thousands of miles away.

And yet it was what Clarke hadn't said that hurt her the most. Her regrets had piled up, and the worst of them all were the words left unspoken.

“Hurry,” she’d said to Bellamy, on that last day. The final word she’d said to him -- the only one she knew for sure that he’d heard.

“You too,” he’d said back, just as desperately.

She played the exchange in her head all the time. Again and again and again.

But Clarke, even then, wanted to say so much more. “Thank you” and “be safe” and “may we meet again.” She’d swallowed all those words, though, afraid of speaking a goodbye into existence. Clarke told herself that they would face the odds and beat them, as they always had, together.

But they weren’t together, and Clarke got lost most nights as she fixated on all the things she’d left unsaid. She thought of what she might say to Bellamy now, if she got the chance. A million ideas zipped through her mind -- Clarke obsessed over it, lying awake, staring at the ceiling or out the window, hoping to come up with the right words, the ones that meant everything, or at least meant anything at all, and sometime around the two-year mark, when she had an entire speech memorized, she realized she’d never said any of those words -- not to Bellamy.

***************

Clarke had never confessed it to Madi, either, but during the fourth year, when it was getting close to the day the space group could come back to Earth, Madi had hopped into the front seat of the Rover, while Clarke lay in the makeshift bed she’d put together in the bed of the truck, and she’d just asked Clarke plainly.

“Clarke?”

“Mhm?”

“Are you going to tell Bellamy that you love him?”

Clarke bolted into an upright position, dropping her sketchpad and the charcoal she’d been holding.

“What -- makes you say that?” Clarke could barely get the words out, she was so surprised.

“I was just wondering. Five years is a long time to keep a secret.”

“It’s not… it’s not a secret, Madi.”

“But he doesn’t know, right? You said when he left, you didn’t get to say goodbye. You said he was your friend, but it broke your heart to be without him. I know you love the others, too, but it’s not the same, right? You love him best.”

Madi spoke with the innocent curiosity that only a child could. Clarke didn’t have it in her to talk around the truth, especially not with Madi. They never lied to one another.

“I think you’re right.”

“But you didn’t tell him before.”

“I -- didn’t really know before. And once I did, it was too late. There wasn’t time, so I didn’t get the chance.”

Madi smiled, and Clarke recognized the mischief in it. “Lots of excuses, Clarke.”

 _Right again._ “Maybe,” she confided in a whisper, smiling back.

“So… are you gonna tell him then?”

***************

Clarke Griffin didn’t know much for sure these days.

She knew she was so, so lucky to have found Madi, and to have built their home together in Shallow Valley. She knew she had stumbled into a tiny slice of Eden, at the exact moment she needed to, and that she had been forced to sacrifice a hell of a lot to get to where she was now. And she knew that if she ever saw him again, she would find the courage in herself to tell Bellamy Blake that she did, in fact, love him. That she probably always had, and she would until her last breath.

For now, though, Bellamy wasn’t back just yet. He was running behind schedule, and Clarke was taking every opportunity to scold him over the radio. Just like old times. She was mostly joking, but some mornings when she’d begin her daily call, Clarke would feel the impatience growing like an unwieldy vine inside her, grabbing hold of her throat and squeezing stray tears from her eyes.

_It’s been safe for you to come down for over a year now… Why haven’t you?_

Still, Clarke had hope. She told Bellamy as much, and she felt the link between them burning as brightly as it ever had. Almost as if he was there on the other side of it, tugging on his end, answering her call.

So before she fell asleep each night, with Madi curled beside her, Clarke would extract herself from Madi’s tangled limbs and go out into the Valley. She’d gaze up at the sky, just breathing for a while. There was a hunger in her recently that she couldn’t quite make sense of, but Clarke had the sudden urge lately to inhale deeply enough that she could swallow up all the distance between the Earth and Space. Between herself and Bellamy Blake.

She hadn’t been able to before, so she was making up for lost time whenever she whispered into the stars above: “I love you. Hurry home.”


	2. 5x03

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is only half-finished as of yet, but if I get any positive feedback/interest I will write and post the rest ASAP. 
> 
> ***
> 
> Bellamy, Clarke liked to say, was the easiest to draw. Her favorite subject… because she knew him best of everyone.

2,199 days, going on 2,200.

Clarke marked the day on the wall without much fanfare. Like it was just another day.

Of course she couldn’t have known that it was quite the opposite: that this day would be the one that changed everything. The day Bellamy would finally make it home.

Just a week before, Clarke and Madi had been working on inventory together, counting out all the food and supplies they had on hand, and calculating the next time they’d need to go foraging for more.

*********

Clarke was proud of herself for this much: Madi wanted for nothing. Shallow Valley was a special place, Clarke’s new favorite location on Earth, the little dot of green that she so desperately wanted to share with her friends stuck in space, and with those still trapped in the bunker. She did not let herself hear the voice in her head wondering if any of them were even alive.

Madi, opening up the tall armoire where Clarke stored most of her clothes and personal belongings, fished out the last remaining colored pencils on the planet: three shades of green, two blue (one dark and one light), a red and an orange, a brown, two yellows, a pink, a peach, and a violet. Clarke used them only on the most special occasions, when she was determined to bring whichever story she was telling to Madi to life. Sometimes words failed, and that’s when Clarke would bring out the colors, so that she could do the story, and its characters, some justice.

After handing the pencils over to Clarke, Madi reached for the four drawings Clarke kept carefully stored at the bottom of the dresser. She pulled them out and surveyed them one by one, lingering on the details. The first was a close-up of Clarke’s mother, Abby. Madi remembered the first time she’d seen the sketch, having wondered aloud at the very few similarities between she and Clarke. They had the same sure set to their shoulders, and Madi thought she could see a resemblance in their high cheeks or the slopes of their noses, but otherwise…

“I’m my father’s daughter,” Clarke had told her, with a sad smile crossing her lips. “I have more of him in me than my mom. Or, I used to anyway.” Clarke was referring to the ways she’d changed since she first got to the ground, but Madi liked to believe that there was still a lot of Jake Griffin’s heart living in his daughter.

Madi shuffled to the next image, of a sealed room in the bunker. Inside it stood Octavia Blake, the winner of the conclave, the girl who saved the human race and helped them learn to live together as one. Surrounding her were other mythic heroes: Thelonious Jaha, the original chancellor, Wells’ father; Marcus Kane, the man who had been willing to sacrifice everything for peace, and whom Abby had grown to love; Abby herself, her hand curled around Kane’s, wearing a doctor’s white coat; Eric Jackson, in the same coat, a doctor himself now; Indra of TriKru, still clad in her battle attire, beside her daughter, the flamekeeper Gaia; and Nathan Miller, wearing his guard’s jacket, the only one Clarke had drawn with a toothy smile. 

Madi knew each of them, and their histories, by heart. She was enamored with all of them, but felt closest to Octavia, who she imagined would understand her best.

In the same fashion as the one before it, the third picture showed the group in space, standing together in a line, but the backdrop this time was inside the Ark, where Clarke had grown up. Front and center stood Bellamy, in a blue t-shirt with his floppy curls hanging over his forehead. On Bellamy’s right was Raven Reyes, one hand gripping an astronaut’s helmet, and on his left stood Monty Green, wearing Jasper Jordan’s worn Unity Day tank, one arm slung around Bellamy’s shoulders, the other wrapping Harper McIntyre close to his side. Next to Raven was John Murphy, a sardonic smile pulling at his lips, and at the end of the line was Emori, the clever grounder thief that Clarke had befriended in the weeks leading up to Praimfaya, with her slender arm draped lazily around Murphy’s waist. The last one on the left side was Echo, and Clarke hadn’t filled her out with many specifics. More like an outline of a tall, sinewy girl. She alone remained a mystery to Madi, because, as Clarke had told Madi once, “I never really knew Echo… at least not well enough to draw her.”

Clarke preferred drawing people she knew, because that way she could be more detailed in their likeness. Seeing Murphy from far away was one thing, but being close to him had helped Clarke capture the minutia that made up his features. Everyone was more complicated than they looked. And had Clarke only ever known Raven as Finn Collins’ girlfriend, she might never have remembered each strand of Raven’s hair, with all the different shades of color woven through it. She might’ve missed the determined glint that lived in Raven’s eyes. 

Bellamy, Clarke liked to say, was the easiest to draw. Her favorite subject… because she knew him best of everyone. Madi knew this must be true, as she turned over the final sketch.

A portrait of Bellamy Blake. It was one of many, more than Madi could count, in fact, but it was the most detailed of them all, with every last one of his freckles catalogued across the page. Over the years, Clarke kept coming back to it, adding in shading here, fixing an eyelash there. The picture seemed so real to her in its dimension that Madi soon knew Bellamy’s face as well as she knew Clarke’s.

Clarke watched on as Madi flipped through them again, curious as to Madi’s continued interest in these pieces.

“How come you’re always bringing those out?” Clarke asked.

Madi glanced at Clarke over her shoulder, then back at the rendering of Bellamy. Pain shot through Clarke in a flash, then dissolved as quickly as it came. Sometimes getting a glimpse of his face hurt Clarke in some inexplicable way.  _ But it would hurt worse not to see him at all. _

“These ones are important to you,” Madi answered finally. “That’s why I like them.”

That, and the fact that Clarke kept them hidden away. It made sense.

“Clarke?”

“Yes?”

“What about Echo?”

_ Echo…  _ Clarke could scarcely remember the girl’s face now. She hadn’t drawn Echo at all in those early days in Shallow Valley -- she’d been too preoccupied with creating an archive of everyone she loved: getting Abby’s smile right; drawing versions of Raven with her brace, and then without (ultimately discarding all of the “before” images); lingering on Murphy’s expression, not sure how to show sarcasm on the page; the many iterations of Octavia; and, of course, the hundreds and then thousands of illustrations of Bellamy and his jet black curls.

Bellamy was the only one Clarke ever got right. She used that as an excuse to attempt more and more renditions of his face, over and over and over.

Madi at times remarked that she would know Bellamy anywhere by now, and warmth spread through Clarke like lava in her veins at the thought of their meeting.

But Echo… when Clarke pictured her now, all she could see was the chalk-white Azgeda mask, and nothing of the girl she knew must have existed beneath it.

Clarke repeated Madi’s question back to her, unsure what Madi was asking.

“I just mean… how will she fit in? When they come home?”

Clarke had often pondered that herself. In spite of herself, she hoped that there had been some sort of reckoning for Echo, up in space, and that she had spent these past six years trying to make amends, to earn forgiveness. Clarke hoped that Bellamy hadn’t suffered too much, stuck together with his sister’s would-be killer, and that instead of holding on to that poison, he had begun to let go and move on from it. She hoped that when they returned, Echo might be part of the group, and be better for it.

But Clarke just didn’t know. It was impossible to say, and she relayed this to Madi as gently as she could, sparing her the gruesome details.

“Do you think Octavia will lift her banishment?” Madi asked.

Clarke frowned. “I think… it will take her some time. For all she knows, Echo died in Praimfaya. It’ll be a shock to her that she’s alive, and… I think it might hurt Octavia to see her brother and her friends becoming close to someone who has hurt her so much.”

Of course, Madi had heard all the stories at least once, most of them twice or more by now. She knew each of the crimes charged against Echo, but she held onto hope that all could be forgiven, if there was penance. Madi’s hope rekindled Clarke’s, whenever that fire burned low, and for her Clarke found herself wishing for the same things. For a life without war. For all of them to be reunited, in Shallow Valley, living among one another in peace.


	3. 5x03 - Continued

For almost 18 years, the ground was the dream. But once the ground became reality, it was _peace_ on the ground that turned into the new dream. A pipe dream, maybe, but Clarke Griffin kept wishing for it.

When shooting stars cartwheeled overhead, Clarke couldn’t help but to tilt her face upward, as if to speak to Bellamy about wishes again, as they had all those years ago.

 _I wouldn’t even know_ _what_ _to wish for._

Clarke had been consumed with Finn at the time, and her teenaged heartbreak over Raven’s arrival. With hindsight, she could see quite clearly that the person she should’ve spent her wishes on had been standing right beside her. In the moment, though, Clarke was busy worrying. Worrying about hurting Raven, and losing Finn, and whether she’d ever see her mom again, and what she would do or say or feel if they did reunite, and, and, and…

Everything back then was so bittersweet. 

Raven had appeared suddenly, in a rocket falling from the sky, and though she’d popped the bubble that had formed around Finn and Clarke, Raven had saved them countless times, often more than once in a day. Raven getting to the ground was the beginning of their trio’s routine: Clarke made the hard decisions, always with Bellamy’s advisement and support, and Raven had put the plans into action. The head, the heart, and the hands.

Looking at Madi, in the present day, had Clarke wondering about the soul. It didn’t help matters that Madi was the last true living nightblood, and that in Madi’s culture, that meant her soul was something _more:_ something powerful, something transferrable, something connected to a lineage of others just like her.

 _But,_ Clarke thought, _aren’t we all like that?_ Aren’t we all connected by one thing or another? By blood, by history, by love?

Don’t we sometimes _choose_ the ties that bind us?

Madi knew the grounder’s traditions even when she was young, but she had mostly grown out of being afraid of them. Still, some aspects lingered on her mind as she grew older. She wasn’t as bad as Clarke, but she did worry over a number of things, and more than anything else, she was a wholeheartedly curious young girl.

On quiet days, when the only noise was their synced breathing and the press of firefly’s wings swishing in the dry air, Madi often broke the silence with questions.

Only her questions came out more like commands. _Tell me about Kane’s mother and her little tree. Explain again how Raven got free of ALIE. Remind me what Jasper and Monty’s handshake looked like._

Clarke indulged her. For more reasons than one. First, she _liked_ spoiling Madi. She liked the eager glint in Madi’s blue eyes that sparked every time Clarke started a story; she liked that it felt like she was giving Madi little gifts to unwrap. More than that, though, Clarke was glad to hold these frequent memorials of her friends. Telling Madi the stories was akin to telling herself the stories, and it meant that she would be less likely to forget them -- they could never fade from her memory so long as she kept them fresh in her mind.

Little details escaped her, of course, but Clarke filled in the missing spaces with harmless embellishments. She told herself it didn’t matter -- because how could it? -- but knowing that she’d forgotten the exact placement of Lincoln’s chest tattoo, or whether Anya’s hair was more dirty blonde than light brown, hurt Clarke more than she cared to admit.

They were all so far from her now.

Madi was her only respite. She was right there, alive, in screaming color. She was Clarke’s heart laid bare.

And she looked so, so much like Bellamy.

It was the earth’s final cruelty against Clarke: to finally be freed of her solitude, only to end up with a child that had long dark curls and a face covered in entire constellations of light freckles.

The irony was a gut punch, but Clarke had long since recovered from it. She tried to see it as a blessing, to have some parts of him so vividly present, even while he was gone. And Clarke had to admit, if only to herself, that it felt a tiny bit like fate that it was these two reminders of Bellamy that she got to hold on to. Two of her favorite things about him.

Though her list of her favorite things about Bellamy was an ever-growing list. These days the number one item on the list was the idea of him in her head, just breathing. _What do I like best about Bellamy Blake? Oh, probably that he’s alive somewhere out there. I really love that about him._

Madi liked to poke fun at how Clarke had gone “from night to day” with her feelings toward Bellamy.

“So… you hated him, and now…?”

“I never _hated_ him!” Clarke would protest. _I didn’t like you at first, that’s no secret._

“I definitely wasn’t his biggest fan, but it only took a few days before I came to understand him. It was hard to wrap my head around at first, because I didn’t have a sibling. None of us did. Bellamy and Octavia were the only ones in the Ark’s history to have a brother or a sister, you know that. But like I said, once I understood him better, it was easier to work together. He wanted to protect his sister, and soon enough he was willing to do anything to protect all of us.”

“I know, I know. You couldn’t have done it without him,” Madi teased, feigning a dramatic eye roll. She’d heard it all before. “So then, you didn’t like him, but then you understood him, and then you worked together, and now you love him.”

Clarke smiled. It was true. She wished Bellamy could be there to hear her say it. To hear Madi reciting their shared history like it was some boring fact from a dusty almanac. _People follow you; you inspire them._

_You inspire me._

 

**********

 

Clarke’s heart was beating out of her chest.

She’d left Madi behind, in one of their hiding places, but she couldn’t be sure whether they’d caught her too, if they were hurting her the way they were hurting Clarke. She knew that Madi wouldn’t break, that it would take a lot to make her talk, and the mere thought of a bruise forming across Madi’s face made Clarke physically ill.

“I love you,” she’d told Madi. Because Clarke didn’t waste her time anymore. She knew how precious it was, how the hourglass was always running out of sand, and how easily the things you loved most in the world could be snatched right out of your grasp.

Clarke wondered if this was it -- if she’d finally run out of sand. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself for another blow.

“Hey! Hey! Stop!” This was the one they called Shaw. He had an innate kindness in him that Clarke recognized immediately. He didn’t _want_ to harm her, but he would ultimately do what he had to do. A spirit kindred to her own, when she had first landed on the ground.

Shaw tried again: “What harm can come from telling me your name?”

It was not lost on Clarke that she was once in Shaw’s position. Interrogating Lincoln, perhaps not with as much mercy as she was currently being shown, because they’d seen him as a threat. And just like Lincoln, she did not trust these invaders from space, so she was using all his same tactics to hold onto her little bit of leverage. Clarke wasn’t saying a word.

Unbidden, Bellamy’s voice popped into Clarke’s head. _Who we are, and who we need to be to survive, are two very different things._

She wasn’t surprised, exactly, because Clarke more often than not could perfectly recall the precise pitch and tone of Bellamy’s voice without much effort, but she hadn’t even consciously been calling him to mind. He was just there, with her, in one of her darkest moments since Praimfaya.

It was the first time she’d been alone again since she’d found Madi. All it once it made sense to her why she had Bellamy on her mind. But being away from Madi was a separation Clarke couldn’t bear. Not this time.

Clarke needed help. She needed a goddamn miracle.

It was such whiplash, to see a ship descending from the sky, all her hopes of being reunited with her friends finally coming true, only to be dashed in the same breath when she realized that it was a ship full of strangers armed to the teeth. Clarke was dizzy with what felt a lot like betrayal.

_It’s been safe for you to come down for over a year now… Why haven’t you?_

“Well, believe it or not,” Shaw started again, despite Clarke’s continued silence, “this is the best conversation I’ve had in over a hundred years.”

Questions zipped through Clarke so quickly she couldn’t hold on to them for more than a second at a time. Her brain was working overtime, searching for a way out of this mess, but she felt useless, and it was impossible not to compare herself to Raven, who would’ve outsmarted these people by now.

The simple truth was that Clarke was weaker now than she’d ever been. Madi took up all the space in her head, her heart, her whole being. She had a one track mind, especially with Madi in danger, and though it was slowing her down, to make room for Madi in the equation, Clarke’s love Madi also fortified her, and sharpened her senses, and gave her the motivation she needed to press on.

Despite his intentions, Clarke was only listening to Shaw speak in the hopes of finding a chink in his crew’s armor. All she needed was one weak spot, the tiniest opening, and she would do whatever it took to get free.

She was willing to take the hits from McCreary, who clearly liked to be on the delivering end of a balled up fist, and Clarke told herself that he could beat her bloody and she would be glad of it, because she couldn’t give any answers if she was out cold.

But then she heard the radio crackle to life, reporting that they’d found Madi. And then the fight left Clarke in a whirlwind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I'm so so glad people are liking this. I'm definitely more than happy to continue writing it! Here's an addition to the events of 5x03 (my personal favorite ep of the season thus far). I'll probably have one more final part to add before I wrap up scenes from this ep if people are interested. (Gotta do some behind-the-scenes of that reunion, right!?) Do let me know what you all think!


End file.
